michelle@mead.UUCP (Michelle Rosing) (08/16/90)
The alpha values associated with an icon or any other grahic primitive are one of the neatest things about NeXT's imaging system (IMHO). Alpha value refers to the relative transparency of a pixel. Any pixel can be opaque (completely covers any pixels it lies on top of) or any degree of transparency all of the way to clear. See the composite demo, icon demo, molecule demo. These all demonstrate compositing with the alpha value. If you look at the Info panel for Icon, it says, "Images on the NeXT Computer System can have four gray values. But thet can also possess an "Alpha" channel which contains information about how trnasparent an image is at a certain pixel. Just as a pixel can be white, light gray, dark gray or black, it can also be 100%, 66%, 33% or 0% transparent." Hope this answers your question. -- Erik ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michelle Rosing Mead Data Central "Do everything I say and I'll Dayton Ohio be your slave" email: mead!michelle@uccba.uc.edu